Five minutes

I knew it was dicey when I walked upstairs. Five minutes. That's all I needed. That's all it took.

Amelia whined briefly as I walked back down the stairs. I sigh. What now? "What's going on, girls?"

"I fell under the table," says The Amelia.

Well if you'd stop standing on the chairs, I think to myself as I round the corner into the dining room. Hmmmm. I should have a child under the table and a child sitting at the table. Where is the latter? Giggles float up from under my husband's great-grandmother's table.

Oh, please no. My calm self says to my panicked self, "They're washable markers. We're not THAT stupid." I brace for the worst and notice that no markers remain beside the open Dora coloring books. 

Amelia says, "Do it 'gain, 'Ginia." Explosion of giggles.

Virginia then says to me, "Mom, Amelia has stripes on her face!"



This post is for Uncle Dave. And I'm convinced the material is a gift from Aunt Ginger, just to make him smile. Thanks for reading, Uncle Dave. I love you.

That Mom, in the pantry, with the soup pot

Warning: Faint of heart need not read further. Also, please don't barrage me with animal rights comments. Thanks.

I turned around and saw my children staring at me with saucer-sized eyes from the dining room table. They were no longer interested in their food. And though they didn't bare intimate witness to what had just happened, Virginia articulated her grasp of the situation with three words.

But wait. I should back up. It's been a while since we've had a chance to chat. I'll give you the Cliff Notes of the pre-quel.

"We have a mouse," he said with a look of total disgust. "It's eating Madison's dog food." I bought mousetraps for him. He couldn't figure out how to set them said they were defective. I silently left the mouse murders to my husband, who shall handle all things unappealling, but who also silently leaves all things that must be purchased (except beer) to me. Spousal Mexican standoff. Until he saw The Rodent. It's big and fat, he said. He revoked my purchasing power and bought proper traps and a plastic container for the dog food. We are confident the problem is solved.

Rookies. They're going to go look for food elsewghere. That elsewhere would be my pantry. Boxes of pasta and hot chocolate mix and dried cranberries were knocked over and gnawwed on in the night.

Now I'm angry. A mouse in the sunroom is basically like a mouse on the deck or something. Obnoxious, but not gross. A mouse in my pantry, nibbling on food that I fix for my family? Gross. And awfully bold. The Hubs sets a trap in the pantry before he leaves for work. The girls and I promptly leave the house for some rodent-free play time and then grocery shopping. We return close to lunchtime.

I see, peeking out from behind the onion box in my pantry, an overturned mousetrap and the tip of a tail. Dude. Gross.

Then, the tail moved. Pretty sure I cussed.

I grabbed the girls and their lunch and put them at the dining room table, hoping the food would distract them long enough to let me scoop up the trapped mouse and take him outside. It's important (to me) that I explain that one cannot see into the pantry from the dining room table. However, one certainly can hear what happens, as our home is the size of a tissue box.

I grabbed the first two things I could find. A broom and a stockpot. Into the pantry I went. Holy geeze. That's a big mouse. That's a big mouse just laying there in my pantry beside my white chocolate candy coating (of the popcorn debacle post) like he's gorged himself into a food coma and has every right to take a power nap on my pantry floor. And he's not caught in the trap. My plan of sweeping an immobile, mostly dead rodent into an old stockpot goes out the pantry window.

I'm not proud of what happened next, but I couldn't let him get away. And the AUDACITY of the thing to power nap there in the light of day, surrounded by all the evidence, unashamed and unafraid of any consequence... I'll spare the play by play. I will say I personally re-enacted a scene from The Patriot. You know, the one where Mel goes to get his kidnapped oldest son and goes totally nutso hacking a redcoat to death. I did it with a broomstick and a soup pot. Also, I wasn't covered in blood.

So, I come around the corner, still in my rodent whacking daze, and see the girls, wide eyed and mouths open, their little brains trying to comprehend what had just happened. I'm instantly mortified. I remember standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring back at them, wondering how in the world I could say, "Mommy had to kill a mouse." They don't even know what that means. Then, Virginia summed it all up.

"That fucking mouse." Didn't I write a post about a cat I couldn't stand?

Later that day, I'm talking to my friend Carrie (also, ironically, of the Mom v. Popcorn debacle). She says, "Kelly, are you sure it wasn't a rat?" This is where we go from a gross situation to S.A.F.U. Stay tuned.